Jessica Shyu, now in her second year with Teach For America, is a special education teacher at an elementary and middle school on the Navajo Nation in New Mexico. Once a journalism student from the Washington, D.C., area, she has since traded the Beltway for the sprawling mesas of the Southwest. In this opinion blog, Jessica will chronicle the good, the bad, and the occasionally amusing of being a young teacher at an underresourced school in a rural community.

The non-entry

I am not updating the blog today. This week’s Tuesday blog entry is about how I am not updating. I am not updating because I am frustrated, tired and stressed out.

I am a full-time-plus (my own special term for overtime-less workers out there who work 60-plus hours per week, but get paid for 2/3 of that time) teacher who attends graduate school at night and on the weekend. I am a grant writer, a behavior committee member, an after-school tutor, a dormitory piano teacher, an Art Club sponsor and a Thursday night karaoke singer. I am tired. I am stressed. I have procrastinated far too long and now have too many assignments due tomorrow for graduate school.

yea, there are only a few of us to take on that responsibility. you've learned alot about the people and the structure. it seems that society and government has given the responsibility to the teachers for it's failings. a cut and run tactic and leave it to education and teachers. guess what?!, we teachers are feeling the effects of our u.s. education system - standard base education seems to be creating more standard base feelings and emotions, creativity null and void, because of too much work not being shared equally by the people. things educationally wise has changed things so dramatically on the reservations, sorry to be so generalized, so much work to be done with a few always doing all the work; be careful.

Hello Ms. Shyu
The Anishinaabek people have a saying, "the Creator only gives you what you can carry" Try not to be too stressed about your situation, most Native American communities on Turtle Island have similar situations, where people who accept responsibility, can see gaps in the system and try to make repairs. Maybe this is something that while you have tea with the Grandmothers, could be brought up as a topic of conversation. One more tidbit, a friend of mine usually reminds me, that you can only eat an elephant one bite at a time.

RESPONSE:
Thank you for those words of encouragement! I'm going to teach that saying to my students tomorrow. I can't wait to hear what they think it means...